Midwest Water Has Pesticides, Report Finds

Published: October 19, 1994

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18—
Millions of Americans swallow five widely used farm pesticides in their drinking water, according to a study by the Environmental Working Group, a private organization that seeks stricter regulations of pesticides.

In releasing its study today, the group said that more than 3.5 million people in 121 Midwestern towns and cities faced an elevated risk of cancer as a result of the pesticides.

The study said that, in all, 14.1 million Americans routinely consumed the following weed killers: alachlor, atrazine, cyanazine, metolachlor and simazine. They are commonly used on corn and soybeans, and the environmental group focused its study on the Corn Belt.

The Federal Environmental Protection Agency said the group's report should be viewed with concern but not alarm. It denied that large numbers of people faced a higher risk of cancer.

"Most drinking water systems in this country are well regulated and by and large monitored frequently," Carol M. Browner, Administrator of the E.P.A., said in a statement. "But this study is another in a series of wake-up calls that tells us we can no longer take for granted that our drinking water is safe all the time."

For its study, the environmental group took the Government's strictest risk standard for pesticides in food and applied it to water. It said its study was based on 20,000 water tests made by state and Federal investigators.

"We should have one standard," said Richard Wiles, lead researcher and author of the study, "and it should be the one most protective of public health."

Clinton Administration officials said that the E.P.A. had approved substitutes for some of the five pesticides that would markedly reduce their use and that it was developing new standards for permissible levels of exposure to others. In addition, they said, the agency will soon begin a review that could lead to banning atrazine, cyanazine and simazine because they are so widely used.

Congress is considering legislation that would take into account the benefits as well as the risks of pesticides when deciding whether to allow their use.

George Rolofson, spokesman for the Ciba-Geigy Company, the makers of atrazine, said he had not seen the group's report but he questioned its use of the narrowest risk standard.

"I think they're misusing it here," Mr. Rolofson said.

Ciba-Geigy has been asking the E.P.A. to allow higher levels of exposure to atrazine because the company says studies showing the chemical's cancer-causing potential were flawed. The agency denied that request.